Any Port in a Storm

Everyone wants to be a hero.  In Grave Keeper, you are a bounty hunter trying to kill the evil skeleton king, which sounds like the perfect hero’s quest.  With sword and shield and bow you fight the demonic horde in the dark castle stronghold. Combining both arena fighting and hack n slash combat, Grave Keeper does its best to keep the action flowing.

Playing on the troupe of being the gallant knight trying to defeat the evil of demon king or undead monster is a good theme to have for a game.  It’s good because it works and it works because it’s well known and easily understood.  These are the bad guys and you have to kill them, it doesn’t get much simpler than that.  You never have to feel bad laying waste to untold number of undead minions.  Using a twin stick controller input scheme, you can hack close up enemies with your sword and keep away anyone else with your bow.  You also have abilities like a dash attack or special sword moves.  All of your equipment can be upgraded using the coins collected from all the dead monsters, dramatically increasing your fighting power.  The lone bounty hunter will stand against wave after wave of monsters until finally finding a boss.  This will happen several times and then you will fight a skeleton king in the castle only to be booted from the castle again back to the previous room.

Grave Keeper started out as a mobile game and that’s very noticeable even from the beginning.  It has daily quests and login rewards which feels right at home on a phone that but not so much for the desktop experience.  Also, while the PC port does look better than its’ mobile cousin using the unity engine, its cinematic scenes are laughable and the character models are too simplistic.  Even the combat has suffered from this poor PC port, because in the mobile version every time you attack by holding the button down you auto target your next enemy.  This auto targeting is not present in the PC version and it makes it difficult to aim at your enemy and attacked and move, but both versions can do not allow you to attack and move at the same time which really hurts the flow of the combat.

Grave Keeper is simple, easy to play, and lets you be the hero.  But with its combat, movement, and level design issues it comes off as a mobile game that doesn’t belong on a PC.  It keeps the annoying traits of all mobile games like daily quests, login rewards, and time wasting design, but does not retain the fluidity of combat it needs.  The only saving grace of these PC port is the feature of online PvP battles with other players which adds a whole new dimension to the game and will increase its longevity.  However, while it is not expensive on PC, it seems like a no brainer to play the free mobile version of it.